This invention relates to data, software, and computer system architecture. Specifically, this invention relates to a data, software, and computer system architecture that interconnects applications of multiple enterprises into a single federated system.
Electronic communication among enterprises such as vendors and suppliers is currently accomplished through networks, including private networks and through public networks, such as the Internet. A participant in the network establishes a connection to the network, and is thus able to transmit a communication, such as an electronic message, to another participant in the data network. The data network delivers the communication from the source participant to the destination participant.
The primary alternative used today for connecting enterprises into a network is a combination of centralized and distributed architectures. A centralized architecture is characterized by a central node, or hub, through which all communications pass. A distributed architecture, on the other hand, provides multiple hubs through which electronic communication may be routed, instead of using a single, central hub. However, whether an architecture is centralized or distributed, the current methods for connecting enterprises suffer from the inability to maintain the overall state of the network.
Without the overall state being maintained, each company or centralized application would have to maintain state independently. A company, for example, would have to determine whether its connectivity to its supplier is operational before initiating any electronic communication with the supplier. For this to be accomplished, every company and application would have to connect directly with every other company and application. This connectivity approach is not feasible for industry segments with many companies and applications.
In addition, none of the existing system architectures provides a means to integrate process activities. With a centralized application, all processing occurs at the centralized application. A centralized system can conduct an overall or end-to-end business process, but needs to own the singular public processes as well. Thus, there is no inherent means to integrate process activities contained in other applications with the centralized applications. On the other hand, distributed systems allow several companies to conduct singular public processes. However, with distributed systems, not only is there a lack of any means to integrate process activities together, but greater complexity arises from the need to automate multiple company processes into an overall process.
The present invention, sometimes called Enterlink, for the first time provides a federated system with state that interconnects applications 150 of multiple community participants 130 with Enterlink applications 140 and core services 120. The Enterlink connects participant companies 130 and applications 150, 140, through the Enterlink bus 110, with each other and with consolidated data stores 170, third party services 160, core services 120, Enterlink applications 140, and private process applications 150. The Enterlink bus 110 uses, for the first time, metachannels 230, a metachannel engine 215 and a metachannel repository 270. Metachannel connectors 250 connect the Enterlink applications 255, 140 with the metachannel 230, while singular process connectors 252 connect the company private process applications 150, 260 with the singular public process channels 240. The invention can be applied to the automotive retail industry 430, among others. The Enterlink applications 140, core services 120, and bus 110, may be operated as a service to participants 130.
The present invention, for the first time, allows companies to own and control singular business processes while also allowing a centralized capability to link these processes into a compound public process. The division of ownership and the control inherent in the Enterlink create a federated system that provide local autonomy to companies for specific public business processes while allowing central management to tie together singular processes into compound processes.
Enterlink, for the first time, creates an overall federated system that has state. As a result, Enterlink provides applications with the capability to operate on the collection of companies and other Enterlink applications as an overall federated system. Furthermore, Enterlink extends the current point-to-point public processes from one-to-one to many-to-many. This allows far more automation of business-to-business interactions than is presently possible. In addition, Enterlink also provides a framework for implementing compound public processes, thus overcoming the disadvantages of the current public business-to-business processes that are only focused on a singular business activity.
Compared to point-to-point interactions, the present invention reduces the number of connections from [n (nxe2x88x921)/2] to [n], where xe2x80x9cnxe2x80x9d is the number of participants. This substantially reduces the amount of effort for a large community to conduct business. That is, to participate in a point-to-point system, each company must establish a one-to-one relationship with each other company. But in this invention, a participant need only establish a business relationship with the Enterlink system pursuant to its rules. For example, a business-to-business environment with 100 companies needing to conduct business yields in a point-to-point system 100(100xe2x88x921)/2=4950 business relationships. The same 100 companies in an Enterlink system yields only 100 business relationships For a business-to-business environment like the retail automotive industry, with an assumed population of 100,000 companies, interconnecting these 100,000 companies yields in a point-to-point system, 100,000(100,000xe2x88x921)/2=4,999,950,000 business relationships. But in an Enterlink system this participant population yields only 100,000 business relationships.
This invention, for the first time, creates a federated system that interlinks multiple company business processes together and allows applications to interact with these processes, through the Enterlink topology. The Enterlink topology is a bus structure where each company has a connection to the bus that enables that company to interact with other companies connected to the bus. Thus, an Enterlink application can integrate with the Enterlink to automate a federated system activity.
Two main components of the invention are (1) the Enterlink (including the bus 110, core services 120, consolidated data stores 170, third party services 160, and Enterlink applications 140), and (2) the interface or connectors 250, 252 needed to integrate each private process application 260, and each Enterlink application 140, to the Enterlink.
The invention will operate on public processes. As a result, the present invention is different from current public process environments in at least two aspects. First, the present invention provides for establishing a connection between the Enterlink and each of a plurality of companies, instead of each of the companies establishing a singular process with each other company. The Enterlink would, in turn, support singular processes as well as compound processes.
Second, the present invention provides a means to connect multiple entities while also maintaining the state of the federated system. Without the Enterlink, each application is designed to be either distributed or centralized and has to deal with connections and state maintenance. With the Enterlink capability, an application only needs a connector to the Enterlink, and lets the Enterlink maintain state as well as supply process connectivity to all the other Enterlink applications and connected company applications.
This invention may use features described in (1) Provisional Application No. 60/176,625, xe2x80x9cPerformance Path Method and Apparatus For Exchanging Data Among Systems Using Different Data Formats,xe2x80x9d incorporated in its entirety herein by this reference, filed on Jan. 19, 2000, by Robert G. Schaefer and Harsh Wardhan, and assigned to Reynolds and Reynolds Holdings, Inc. of Dayton, Ohio, and (2) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/741,008, xe2x80x9cPerformance Path Method and Apparatus For Exchanging Data Among Systems Using Different Data Formats,xe2x80x9d incorporated herein in its entirety by this referenced, filed Dec. 21, 2000, by Robert G. Schaefer and Harsh Wardhan, and assigned to Reynolds and Reynolds Holdings, Inc. of Dayton, Ohio.